Brown, an athletic 6-foot-5 player with an exceptional shot from Oakland, Calif., picked Oregon over Arizona State and Washington in a live performance on ESPNU, saying the Ducks were “the best fit’’ for him.

Brown averaged 23.5 points and 3.4 rebounds per game as a
junior.

This summer, he played for the Oakland-based Drew Gooden
Soldiers, who won the inaugural Fab 48 in Las Vegas as Brown was named tournament MVP.

Rated as the fifth-best shooting guard and 22nd-best overall player in the country by Scout.com and Rivals.com, Brown visited Eugene last weekend and was in attendance for the Ducks’ 52-31 win over Stanford – a showcase for the school, with a national television audience and a very enthusiastic crowd.

Brown joins guards Brett Kingma (Mill Creek, Wash.) and Bruce Barron (Carbondale, Ill.) along with Westview forward/center Austin Kuemper in the Ducks’ 2011 recruiting class as coach Dana Altman rebuilds a program that was on life support mere months ago.

The Ducks lost four players to transfer (guard Matt Humphrey and forwards Drew Wiley, Jamil Wilson and Josh Crittle) another to academics (guard/forward LeKendric Longmire) and another (center Michael Dunigan) to a professional team in Israel.

That exodus, plus the NCAA investigation into eligibility issues forced the cancellation of a summer tour to Italy and threatened to cast a pall over the opening of the Matthew Knight Arena early next year.

But the recruiting efforts of Altman and his staff created light at the end of the tunnel – a light that began to shine much more brightly on Thursday with Brown’s announcement.